


Fata Morgana

by nonphenomenaut



Series: Trapped in Massachusetts [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: 90's Nostalgia, Body Horror, Descriptions of sex, F/M, Hurt Fox Mulder, MSR, Manipulation, Sequel, Witchcraft, evil Diana, made up blood magick, o the surprise, so many adjectives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonphenomenaut/pseuds/nonphenomenaut
Summary: Mulder's in a daydream; Scully's in a nightmare
Relationships: Diana Fowley/Fox Mulder, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: Trapped in Massachusetts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2023522
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

"Hey there little lady. Can I buy you a pickle?"

A long arm reaches over her shoulder and squeezes the liquid-filled bag hanging on the hook in the checkout line in front of her. The swollen cucurbit bobs in its brine like a bizarre snowglobe. Dancing in sesame sparkles.

The front door chimes as more people enter, brought in with a burst of cold wind. They take the time to politely scuff their snowy boots on the saturated doormat, joining the afternoon fray. It's the post-work rush of people on the lookout for a little entertainment, biding their time until Thanksgiving and Christmas can come roaring through to give some sort of justification to the freezing weather.

He's standing right up against the back of her like a creep. Emanating heat through all their layers.

"It's hard to believe something like that would have ever been approved by the FDA." Scully comments apprehensively, tearing her eyes away to glance back over her shoulder. "Mulder. Why'd you get more? I thought we already agreed on these two."

She holds them up as though he's forgotten, 'White Christmas' and 'Black Christmas' consummately adopted and slumbering peacefully in their blue and white plastic clamshells. It had taken them over an hour in the 'Holiday' section to finally decide.

Scully squints at the triple stack he's able to easily clamp in one big hand. Seeing 'The Planet of the Apes' (a title for him) and 'To Catch a Thief' (a title for her) as well as, "'The Legend of Drunken Master', really Mulder?"

He brightens as she hones in. "Yeah really. It's _Jackie Chan_ Scully. Kee-yiy. Whappa." His free hand slices out, approximating a couple of karate moves in front of his plunder. "Plus it's a new release and it was the last one behind the box, so," he rattles his VHS in victory, "it was obviously meant to be."

She continues to frown at him unconvinced.

"Variety is the spice of movie night Scully." He proffers while bouncing on his toes, but then his grin turns wolfish as he leans in close despite her tracking eyes and gives her the softest, most chaste peck on the back corner curve of her jaw. Right against her pulse point. 

He's close enough now to hear her tiny gasp of her breath. Can see the way her lips come apart.

Knowing she can't deny him.

He lingers there, dropping his voice, whispering into the sensitive juncture that peeks out just above her collar, a place he feels that he's been admiring for a millennia now and his hot breath stirs her hair. "And if everything goes like I think it will, we won't make it past the opening credits before you show me some of your best moves."

She shoots him a look with the marksmanship of an FBI agent and expertly hides the wave of gooseflesh that goes down her arms. 

It was a testament to sleeping with a psychologist, she reasons, that he has aspired to expose every single conceivable kink she had (including ones she hadn't even know about) and was currently using this particular one against her, right here, right now, in this Blockbuster. 

In full public view.

She has the sudden bright image of them making love in the afternoon on his green leather couch as daylight pours in through his apartment windows, irradiated by the purity of the sparkling snowstorm. 

She can see him clearly, the long expanse of his muscled body bent beneath hers as he plumbs himself deep into her buttery depths.

Scully involuntarily licks her lips and swallows, resolute in the thought that the heatwave she's suddenly experiencing is a direct result of her coat. And nothing more.

They'd only started having sex a month ago.

It had started a little while after they had come back with nothing from the meteorite crash in Massachusetts and had catalyzed this new chapter of their lives with the stolen kiss inside her bedroom. Waiting (at her insistence) until their wounds had more satisfactorily healed.

This particular kink was one they had discovered by accident after she'd come home to her apartment from her first day back at work and he (still on the tail-end of his sick leave, though recently freed from his cast) had been feeling playful enough after a shower to slide up behind her.

He had wrapped her up in his arms against his naked chest, enveloping her with her jacket still on, hair still damp and warm against her ear. "Tell me G-woman," he had growled into the nape of her neck, kissing the base of her skull after she'd gasped his name in greeting, "is that your gun or are you just happy to see me?"

They had done it right there on the floor.

Scully straightens her thrumming body, keeping a check on her breathing as she leans her head against him briefly before shifting him off.

He certainly put the demon in demonstrative.

"Whaddaya say I go get us some coffee?" He suggests magnanimously, assuming a more appropriate stance without moving away.

She spies what he is eyeing across the street through the big flat panel windows. Where it looks like a picture beneath the silver garlands and hanging holiday bobbles, framed perfectly through the sprayed-on frost, to where a large coffee vendor stands next to his gleaming machine. 

She has to admit, it does look quite inviting.

"You know you do have a coffee maker in your apartment Mulder. You don't have to buy any." She supplies economically.

"Yeah, but it doesn't taste the same and I want to." Lifting like a crane, he dumps his movies over her shoulder and into her hands, trusting her to balance the stack. "Here, you take care of these and I'll meet you out there, okay?" Giving her a peck on the cheek, he rushes out the door, briefly holding it for a woman coming in. 

"Next in line please?"

"Oh and uh, I'll owe you for the late fee! I accidentally lost it." He calls out before the door shuts, opening his umbrella against the flurrious large flakes of snow.

"What late fee?" 

But he's already gone. Loping to the corner for the crosswalk, careful not to slip.

"That'll be $19.95." The nametagged cashier says brightly to Scully.

She's too busy writing a check to see the commotion when it happens outside.

She crosses the street against the cold, carrying her little sack of entertainment as she threads through the slower pedestrians and it's not until she looks up from checking the receipt, looks up wanting to find his head above the crowd and a proper explanation of why they now own a missing copy of Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy, that her stomach drops straight into her knees. At the same time her sack drops into the burm of clotted snow.

Mulder is gone.

He is gone. 

And the only sign that he had been here at all are the two small paper cups of coffee dashed upon the ground and his big black umbrella lying in the middle of the road crushed like a spider. 

The surrounding crowd giving her more questions than answers.

\--

She strode down the concourse with her garment bag and a carry-on, flicking her loose brown hair off her shoulders after having given herself a thorough once-over in the bathroom mirror to re-line her eyes. 

She was intent on making a quick stop before the luggage claim. 

Her fur coat was draped over one arm at the ready for the swirling elements outside and she had just arrived at Dulles International after a fourteen hour flight from Carthage International in Tunis, dying for a cup of real coffee.

Slipping into the airport cafe, she took a stool and draped her bags across the counters, making sure no one could sit too close.

"Hello. Excuse me? I'd like an Arabic coffee please and do you have any cinnamon?" 

She was already craving the tiny dark joy that came as rich as sin in little espresso-sized cups and she was keen to put Dulles' 'international' menu to the test. 

Living in Tunisia for the past five years had done very little to change the airport as she had once known it. She wondered if the glimmering expanse of D.C. she had seen outside her little window as the plane had descended would reflect the same.

She sipped delicately, noting that the brew was close but not perfect, and turned in her seat to watch the other travelers pass by.

How different they were from the people in Tunis, how ultimately very much the same. 

A young couple walked by the doorway, bright and eager and in love, the young man's arm slung around the young woman's shoulder, passing on a secret that made her blush and laugh and smack him on the chest. 

Diana Fowley wondered if they were headed somewhere warm, somewhere sunny. About to embark on an adventure they would soon never likely forget. Somewhere like where she had gone to and come back from. The trip of a lifetime. For the benefit of pleasure though, not business.

She already missed the warm ocean air and the Mediterranian shine that bisqued off the buildings of glaring white. Their welcoming cornflower blue doors. The waft of honeysuckle.

While she pondered these things, Diana found that she had been twirling her wedding ring absentmindedly on her finger. The one she hadn't taken off for five years now. Despite everything. At the very least having made her traveling safer.

It had been a small karat, the best he could afford at the time, and unwilling, even at her persistence, to ask either of his parents for the money to buy a bigger one. 

Meager as it was, it was still going to take him eight months to pay it off on a government salary. 

"I don't want them to be involved, Di. This is supposed to be just between us." He had assured her while she'd been straddling his lap with his hands on her hips. They had both looked down at the diamond on her hand on his chest and had hoped for the future. He had seen the disappointment in her eyes. "I'll get you a bigger one when I've got a few more years under my belt in the BSU okay? The paychecks'll start getting better. I promise." 

He had sealed this with a kiss, which had been summarily broken. 

Fox had been on the fast track to go up in the Bureau, but instead he had gone down. Down beneath the Earth where only creatures were meant to crawl.

"I thought I'd find you down here." 

Diana had turned on the light, igniting the basement room and had found towers of boxes and sheafs of spiky paper piles built like a boundary between him and the outside world. Each time she had come down here to find him, she had found that the piles had gotten larger. The distances between them more impassable. 

The mess incrementally more organized.

He had slowly but surely been moving in.

"Huh? Oh hey Di." He had blinked up at her in surprise from his seated position on the floor wearing his glasses and a loosened tie with his shirtsleeves rolled up. A stolen coffee pot from upstairs had been plugged in next to him on the floor. His mug having long since been repurposed as a receptacle for sunflower husks.

His voice had gone gruff from disuse and sodium and he had raised a hand to press at his eyes, having stared at tiny print for too long. 

"You didn't come home again last night Fox." She had said, somewhat coldly, already knowing he would have some excuse. "I waited up for you."

Fox had glanced at his watch and marveled at the time, scruffing a hand through his hair. "Jesus. I've been here all night? Guess I lost time." A semi-sheepish look had passed over his face at that, a look that had meant he wasn't really all that sorry but wouldn't mind forgiveness anyway. "I was just looking at some more of these case files and um, must've got distracted."

She had looked at the floor. At the files. At the chaos waging around him as he had risen to his feet. He had seen her looking as he had stretched out his spine and had smirked at this new view from a different angle. At the mess he'd gotten himself into. "I don't suppose you want to talk about it over a cup of coffee, do you? There's a sink in here somewhere, I can rinse this out."

But his wry humor had lost all its flavor.

After a long night of reflection, Diana had come to a conclusion. And she had met his eyes.

"I'm losing you Fox." 

She had already known the dismissive look his face would take. Already having felt the cords start to come loose between them. Knowing that once she had found the centaur in the middle of his labyrinth, there would be little she could do to coax him out again.

Fox had scoffed at her. "You're not losing me Di. I'm right here. I just lost track of time trying to find something for a case is all."

"And what did you find?" She had dared, crossing her arms. Upping the ante. Knowing what he would say next.

"Uh," he had cupped the back of his neck then, blowing out his cheeks. That same sheepish look passing over his face as he glanced at her. "Nothing specific yet. But a lot of other interesting stuff."

Diana had cast one more dubious eye to the boxes and the piles and the paraphanaliac litter that had lost its way to the incinerator. Churning against the cold feeling in her gut.

"Like check this out." He had motioned to the previously-empty filing cabinet he had dragged in from the hallway. Its bottom drawer halfway open, its maw halfway filled. "I've started filing these in chronological order and every single one I've found from the early days was signed by an agent named Arthur Dales. Now, from what I can tell, this guy was the first one to start compiling all these unexplained files - what he's been calling 'x-files' - and you won't even believe what's in the very first one Di; something called 'xenotransplantation'. What the hell do you think that is?"

There had been a light in his eyes that she had not seen since their wedding night. The light of interest.

Fox had been shaking his head at his luck as though he'd just stumbled into King Soloman's Mines and discovered its mysteries. Not yet having uncovered the booby traps. 

He had rubbed his darkened chin. "I can't explain it, but I have a feeling that these x-files are it Diana. Based on some of the other reports that I've read in here, these could hold the keys to everything. To Samantha. To her abduction. The truth is IN HERE. I just have to find it."

She had closed her eyes against the sound of that little girl's name. The brown-haired blue-eyed ghost that she felt she was constantly vying against for Mulder's attention. He doted on his missing sister. Obsessed over her disappearance. He had often called her name out in his sleep.

She had eventually come to secretly and silently hate the dead little girl.

Fox had looked at her then in the challenge of her silence, putting a hand through his hair to denote that he had something important to say. "Y'know, I think it's gonna be a little bit like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, but uh, I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm pretty sure I've earned enough sway to ask the Bureau for a transfer. I feel like I can do better work here. Close some of these cases, which definitely look like they could use some help. What do you think?" He had put his hands on his hips, standing his ground.

So it had been with a certain amount of satisfaction that she had pulled the rug out from underneath him.

"I've already requested a transfer too."

Fox's mouth had dropped open then. His look of incredulity had been amusing. "Wha- to where? What department?"

"Europe."

"Diana." This had flabbergasted him. His jaw had clenched tight. "Don't you think that's something we should have discussed first?"

It had been her turn to sneer. "What's there to discuss Fox? You made your decision without needing to discuss it with me."

"I'm discussing it with you now! And I'm sure as hell not asking to be transferred _out of the country_!" And suddenly a look of revelation had come over him, all his years of an Oxford psychology degree coalescing. His hands had slid down loose at his sides, his shoulders had fallen. "You're running away from me. From us. Diana," he had tried, contrite and beseeching. Had tried to approach her. "I know things have been a little distant between us lately, but c'mon. We can work on-"

But she had shaken her head, stopping him in his tracks.

"It's not worth chasing someone who isn't even there Fox. I'm not like you." She had watched his eyes clamor with emotion and had still been willing to stick the knife a little further in. "My transfer's already been approved. My flight to Berlin leaves at eleven and I already packed all my things. You can keep the apartment."

The one they had just recently picked out together.

She had straightened her shoulders then. Aligning the now-lifted weight of her burden. "I just came down here to tell you goodbye."

She had gone to him then, the dumbfounded lummox, leaning over the island of misfit files to grab his loose hand. Had given him a kiss on his dumbfounded cheek. Whispering. "Good luck Fox. Remember that I love you."

And she had turned away, leaving him where he had been standing. Not bothering to even shut the door.

Diana counted up the exact change that was due and placed it next to her empty cup and saucer before she gathered up her things, rummaging through her coat pocket to turn on her phone and call the FBI.

"Hello, this is Special Agent Diana Fowley. Yes, it has been a long time. I'm finally back Stateside and I was wondering if you could get me Agent Fox Mulder's office number? No, just the number, thanks."


	2. Chapter 2

\--  
CHAPTER 2  
\--

"Get a pen and write this down right now! His name is Fox Mulder. Eff, oh, ex. Em, you, el, dee, ee, are. He's six feet tall and approximately one-hundred-and-seventy pounds. Brown hair, hazel eyes. There's a mole on his right cheek. He is recently recovering from a tib fib fracture to his right leg and broken ribs. He was struck by a car today which may have exacerbated his injuries. He's allergic to morphine.

"If he or any John Doe matching the description I've just given you is admitted to this hospital I want you to call me immediately. Do you understand? My name is Special Agent Dana Scully. My cell phone number is 555-3564, this area code. I'm with the FBI, I'm his doctor, and I am trying to locate him. It's an emergency. Yes. Thank you." She stabs at her phone button, her breath steaming out. 

Scully's completely oblivious to the heaving snowstorm that has picked up its fury to match her's. Flakes accumulating on her shoulders. She fixates immediately on the familiar man ducking beneath the yellow tape, but does not move from her spot. "What did you find out?"

He had dropped everything and come as soon as she'd called, just having shouldered his way through the obstinant clutch of gawkers that are melting big gray circles on the sidewalk beneath their combined heat, not all that surprised at their willingness to stand in the blitz of a snowstorm to witness their tax dollars at work. 

He'd seen it a hundred times by now.

Assistant Director Walter Skinner approaches her with his face in a concentrated frown. Tucking his phone away, he wishes that in his haste to get here, he'd thought to bring a hat as he feels flakes touch down against his bald pate.

"I just hung up with the MPDC and asked them to put out an APB on a man fitting Mulder's description and - from what witnesses are describing - a black Rolls Royce heading North from this location."

"What about the plates? Did anybody get a look at them?" She's already dialing the next hospital on the list from the page she ripped out of the nearest phonebooth phonebook.

"No." He sighs.

Scully tightens her lips and spins away, plugging her ear against the noise around them as she repeats all the information she's been relaying to every area hospital within a one hundred mile radius of where they are. 

"Get a pen and write this down right now..." 

It is another minute before she is back. Looking even more determined.

Skinner continues, pointing to the streetlight with a bare hand. "I've also requested a copy of the video feed from this closed-circuit camera at the time of his abduction, in addition to every successive camera heading North for ten miles, including all major crossroads, but it's going to take some time to get it put on tape and bring it over.

"Corroborating statements from witnesses claim that Mulder was struck, folded up onto the hood and fell to the ground before the vehicle stopped. They also claim that the driver then got out and helped him into the backseat before driving off."

"Did any of them get a look at the driver?"

Skinner's face doesn't change. "They say the driver was wearing a scarf around their head, a long fur coat, and sunglasses. Tall but slim build. The assumption is that the perpetrator was a female, but nobody questioned so far had gotten a clear look at her face."

"How!" She balks at him angrily, needing to focus her worry. "How do a group of people standing three feet away watch a man get struck by a car, get helped into said car and not a single one of them can recall any useful information? HOW?" Her left eye is stubbornly refusing to blink.

"I don't know." Skinner says, thrusting his cold-pained hands into his pockets. "But what has me more concerned is that witnesses claim that the collision appeared to be intentional. That the driver singled out Mulder specifically by going up onto the sidewalk to hit him."

Scully blows out a heavily gathered breath that fumes like a boiling kettle, closing her eyes for a moment with her face tilted up towards the sky. Her eyelashes catching the snow. She's fighting with her entire will against the want of her bottom jaw to chatter.

While she's preoccupied, Skinner gives her a concerned once-over, wondering just how long she's been standing out here. He takes in the burnished pink slice of her nose and cheekbones and is pleased to see that she at least has gloves on. His paternal instincts want to hustle her inside someplace, to ply her with hot tea and a warm blanket while his professional instincts know how pointless any suggestion of the sort would be.

Special Agent Dana Scully has only one thing on her mind right now and it is not her own well-being.

"Can you think of any enemies Mulder may have had?"

Her eyes flash open at him, incredulous. "Sir?"

Skinner is already aware of the superfluity of his question. "Standard procedural questioning Agent Scully, but I'll rephrase; are there any _recent_ enemies he may have made that would be females that you can think of?"

He's amazed that the snow is actually allowed to even touch her given how fiery orange her hair is and how butane blue her eyes are in combination. It should, by all accounts, be vaporized coming into her mere vicinity. 

"No sir. Not to my knowledge."

"Can you think of any reason why this woman may have singled Mulder out? Wanted to hurt him?"

 _Jealousy_ flashes through Scully's mind suddenly, but it is just as suddenly cast to the side for its impossibility.

No one knew about them but them. 

It had been a whispered pact they had made in the twilight moments after their first time becoming physical. Holding hands in her bed, still slicked with sweat and breathing heavily. Having gotten as good as they gave.

They had agreed to explore this new facet of their relationship with no outside interference for as long as they could. Or for as long as they felt it necessary. And she wanted to keep it that way.

"No sir."

"What were you two doing before this occurred Agent Scully?" 

She gestures over to the Blockbuster where more people have their faces pressed up against the holidayed glass irradiated by the glow of the store's innocuous blue sign. 

Finally remembering the wet plastic bag at her feet, she looks down and only realizes that her receipt has long-since blown away. "We were renting movies sir. He came over here to get us some coffee. I came out to find him and he was gone."

"Do you recall anyone around you acting suspiciously?" 

Scully searches her mind. 

Unzipping the memories of her day, she remembers waking up to her alarm in her own bed facing an empty side, knowing that Mulder had gone out for an early morning jog before work despite the cold weather claiming that 'it's not supposed to get bad until tonight' and her unnecessary but necessary mumble of 'go easy on that leg Mulder' to which he'd hummed and kissed her momentarily goodbye. 

She remembers the tangy burst at the back of her tongue as she'd stood against the kitchen counter trading wedges from her breakfast orange for interesting articles to be read aloud to her from the newspaper he'd picked up, including one such profanity from the National Enquirer with his hair still damp from the shower.

She remembers how he had surprised her at her car when she'd been about to drive away, knocking on her window and holding his tie back against his chest as he leaned in to give her a very unprofessional kiss she had felt clear down in her toes before saying 'better hold me to that later' while wearing his work suit and a soppy smile as she'd finally driven away. 

She recalled nothing out of the ordinary during the mundane and very professional day they'd spent with each other in the basement of the Hoover building playing their designated parts of government employees. Discussing their current case with conjecture that vacillated between idle talk to straight-out contention over exactly _why_ and _HOW_ someone would be taking all the organs and only some of the bones of their victims while leaving their skin fully intact.

She still recalled nothing strange when they'd left work in their own separate cars, only to meet back at his apartment as planned, and had decided on a whim to rent some movies after they'd finished eating dinner.

Scully swallows at how unremarkable all these details are and yet how they stand out in stark relief in the light of the current circumstances. Their sudden preciousness against the prospect that they may never happen again.

She shakes herself immediately against such a treacherous thought and doesn't realize she's strangling her phone.

She WILL find Mulder. She will hold him to his promise.

And she knows with the greatest certainty that despite all her recollections, none of them have betrayed the stony look of the porcelain mask of her face as she stares back at the Assistant Director. 

"No sir. Not that I can recall."

The windchill gets more fangs as it rises into a gale and Skinner fights the want to duck his head into his collar like a turtle. His ears are absolutely burning. "Where's your car Agent Scully? How'd you get here?" It's getting hard to see her clearly through his glasses. She's turning into an impressionist's painting in the kamikaze snow.

"It's at Mulder's sir. We walked here."

"I think you should go back to his apartment and get out of the weather Agent Scully. It's going to get dark soon." Skinner finally says against the hissing sky. The streetlights had just blinked on.

"But sir-"

He steps closer to her, lowering his voice despite the wind, talking as though they're in his office and speaking off the record. Essentially blocking the snow with his height. 

"Please Dana. Wherever she's headed, we're going to track her down and we're going to get Mulder back. I want you to be ready when we do."

\--

His six-foot frame is folded into the backseat. Keeping one foot pressed against the door keeps it from accidentally bouncing into his right, which is currently burning like a ransacked city. And as much as that particular spot hurts on his own, it's honestly the least of his worries.

There's blood beneath his fingers as they're curled against his belly and the richter of pain that goes off in other parts of him with every jostle of the car is doing nothing to help the bombarding waves of nausea. He's pretty sure he has all the tell-tale signs of a concussion and can feel the constrictive tightness of a goose egg already forming on the back of his scalp. 

He must've hit the pavement pretty hard, seeing as how he doesn't quite remember how he got here. But he has the vague idea that this person is driving him to emergency care and he'll show his appreciation as soon as he can.

Which is going to have to be later.

Mulder has his eyes pinched tightly closed, trying like hell to keep himself from throwing up, but the heavy breaths he wants to take to keep it under control are only managing to be thin and reedy. They're making his recently-mended ribs complain loudly, like they might have been re-broken.

Each breath is akin to a knife in his lungs.

Distantly he's aware that Scully's not going to be too happy when she finds out he's exacerbated his old wounds while acquiring a few new ones. He was supposed to be taking it easy.

But he's more than willing to weather her concern if only he can be in her presence.

"You have to call my partner...call Dana Scully." He groans out into the self-imposed darkness. "Tell her what hospital we're going to."

Turning up the windshield wipers' frequency, the driver ignores his plea. Snowflakes the size of silver dollars are splatting and sliding and growing in number against the windshield as she blows through a barely acknowledged red light.

The car takes a sickening swerve around a blaring horn and Mulder slides across the leather, throwing out his hand at the last second to keep from smashing his already aching head. His bloody fingers claw into the expensive tan upholstery, holding him fast.

Not hearing any sort of confirmation to his statement, Mulder unballs his fist from his stomach and worms it into his coat pocket. A nasty pothole rattles the chassis of the car and a surprised noise is wrung out of him, but he is triumphant in wrapping his hand around his phone.

"Here." He pants, thrusting it out blindly. His wrist heavy on the armrest. The fat block of plastic slick in his fist. "She's one on speed dial."

Ignoring the device at her elbow, Diana reaffirms herself on their Northward course and finally dares to take her eyes off the road, stretching her neck up to get a good look at him through the rearview. One she's been wanting to take for _hours_.

Risking exposer, she lifts her sunglasses up and looks at him without the amber tint, drinking him in. Pleased to see that his eyes are tightly shut, she gets to look as long as she dares.

He's the same as she remembers him, still handsome and fit and despite the green cast to his skin and his hair cut shorter and styled differently than he used to, he appears to be the same old Fox Mulder she had once known and married and loves.

A wild excitement inside her settles a bit now that she finally has him and she's still slightly amazed that she'd been able to get him in the car so easily, though she imagines his head crashing into the sidewalk and the shock of the pedestrians into stillness around them had had some help in that.

There is, however, a twist in her guts at the sight of his missing ring, but she resolves that soon such a drawback will be rectified. 

He will be hers again.

She only has to get him to their destination. The rest had already been planned.

Clipping her eyes briefly to the passenger's seat, Diana smiles as she catches a glimpse of the file that had brought them here. The very catalyst to her plan.

It had been an idea that had struck her while she'd been reminiscing about her ex-husband last night, lying in bed, touching herself. Shamelessly reliving the ways he had used to pleasure her. His unbridled voracity in bed. She had reached her climax at the same moment that her plan had come together and his name had escaped her lips. Christening her idea.

It was a report she had stolen from Mulder's office later in the dead of night after taking a quick look around. (Deriving a certain pleasure in the fact that Scully's name wasn't even on th door.) It had been buried at the back of one of the file cabinets, a case so old that they would never miss it because it was one that had been looked into and subsequently abandoned well before that little redhead had even been assigned. 

It was one of the first cases Mulder had taken on in those first few days of his new transfer to the basement, back when he'd still been willing to call Diana at international rates at a ridiculous hour wanting to bounce ideas off her receptive mind. All before their burgeoning new workloads untethered them completely from each other later that year.

It had been a case involving a slighted fiancee who was convinced that another woman had cast spell on her betrothed to steal him away. He had been acting strangely, claiming that he did not know who this woman claiming to be his fiancee was and that he was fiercely devoted to the other. Much to the contrary of what friends and family and coworkers said. 

The farthest Mulder'd gotten was that there was indeed a witch currently residing on Massachusetts Avenue, because the other woman the man claimed to be currently in love with had confessed to visiting her, but the trouble was that he wasn't able to find specifically where the witch resided.

But Diana had.

And she had struck a bargain with her earlier today after tracking Mulder and his partner down this morning and watching them from afar. Her disdain for _Dana Scully_ had only intensified when she had to watch him lope around her like an adoring puppy. Opening the door for her in his customary gallantry. Leaning in the window to give her a kiss. 

Having to endure watching him walking backward with his briefcase, smiling like a loon as he watched her drive away.

Diana's antipathy had only abated once she had watched him get into his own car and had the sudden realization that they were taking separate cars to the same workplace in an effort of secrecy. She was the only one who knew about them besides them, which meant that there would be no other meddlesome persons to get in her way.

It was perfect.

All Diana had to do now is get him to the witch and the rest would go according to plan.

"Call her please." Mulder insists again and doesn't give up on handing over the phone until he feels a leather-clad hand slip around it, brushing against his fingers. "Call Scully."

In his relief, he does not hear it when she shuts it off and tosses it into the passenger's seat atop the X-File. Can only feel the car turn and drive on in silence, before turning again and coming to a stop.

"We're here."

It's the only words the driver's spoken for the entire drive.

He hears her get out and come around the back of the car, pulling open the back door that's closest to his head, letting an unrelenting gust of the snowstorm steal in and plunder all the warmth that had been accumulating in the car. Icy fingers drive their way down his collar and into his soggy shoes.

There are hands on his shoulders, manipulating him to turn and despite his protestations, they manage to get him over onto his back. He is rewarded by a gloved hand that sneaks under the back of his head while another brushes through his hair very gently like a pet. 

A dark shadow eclipses the brightness he can see through his closed eyes. But it's a leather thumb that ruffles his eyebrow and slides gently down his nose that gets him curious enough to want to open his eyes and for a moment he struggles against the blaring white of the weeping world as he waits for them to adjust.

The snow is streaming down at him from far above, blinking into existence around halfway as its fragments tap quietly on the world around him, his mind just perceptive enough to note that this place seems eerily silent to be the entrance of a hospital.

The woman is leaning over him now, taking up the central point of his view with her fur coat and her covered hair blocking most of the snow from hitting his face and he can see his upended reflection in her large black sungla--

Sunglasses?

His memory gutters suddenly at the vision. Two views overlapping and fighting for dominance in his mind as the hold on his head shifts, both hands cradling him now, infinitely careful to edge around the goose egg.

"Oh Fox." She coos sympathetically in a voice he can't quite remember. "I've missed you so much."

And something doesn't seem right. He doesn't remember telling her his name.

Suddenly there are lips on his, thin and warm and soft, teasing his mouth to respond. Light touches. Little pecks. Before they grow in length and pressure. Her chin bumps into his nose. She's kissing him upside-down and eagerly and when she opens her mouth and moves his head to fit her needs, he feels her tongue make a sweep against the chevron of his lips.

This is nice but this feels wrong. 

This is wrong.

This isn't Scully.

I don't want to do this.

"Stop. Wait..." he mumbles against her and the words making his mouth open. Letting her tongue come in. 

Diana takes the advantage while she can, deepening their one-way kiss, trusting that he'll come around. 

He had often commented on the skill of her mouth when they'd been together, especially when she used it not just as a means for kissing. She knows he won't be able to deny her for very long.

Sunglasses.

There's a forgotten feeling from long ago that clumbers back into his addled mind, taking form in fits and starts as the images twirl and run together. As his head swims.

He's on the precipice of remembering, soft fur against his forehead, brushing against his eyelids. This woman's urgency and tenderness doing all it can to soften the calamity in his head. 

He can't pull back. He's at her mercy. He almost wants to kiss her back.

It feels so nice to kiss.

Sunglasses.

The memory ignites. Catches hold.

He had heard a scream from behind him and the pedestrians had parted. 

He had been turning away from the coffee vendor, tucking the handle of his umbrella beneath his chin as he juggled the two coffee cups into a better position when he'd seen the flash of headlights arcing towards him. Seen the silver smile of a grill as tires bumped up over the curve. And then a pair of large black sunglasses that had been looking right back at him from behind the steering wheel as he was struck. 

The hood ornament stabbing into his belly.

His head striking the concrete.

Mulder twists his head to the side, breaking his mouth loose to speak. To accuse. 

"It was you."

The woman's lips stop their assault in an instant. Wet and hot against his cheek.

"You're the one that hit me." Mulder gapes up as the woman steps away. Letting go of him completely. Letting his head drop and the back of his skull explodes in pain against the backseat, making his vision swim. His eyes water. His eyesight go fuzzy around the edges.

"Take me back." He demands, wanting but failing to sit up. "Take me back to Scully."

Snowflakes accost his face again. The sky's cold crying melts and slew against the plains of his face, running down beneath his jaw to tickle his nape. A frigid wind whistles past his ears while the pain in his body begins to rebloom. His hands clamber around for something to hold, to give him leverage. His belly burns in protest as it tightens.

"Right now."

He can't get up because there is another face.

This one is smaller than the woman's. Shorter. Closer.

Human-like but not.

It has short black hair crowning a dark-skinned skull. A large heavy brow that cloaks two deep-set red eyes that give way to a flat, folded nose, big ears, and rubbery lips that stretch into an O of interest as it peers down at him in childlike wonder.

It cocks its head to the side. As curious about him as he is about it. Snowflakes catching in its fur.

Mulder recognizes it as something that he should know the name of but he can't quite place. It's too incongruous against what he knows. It shouldn't be in a city, it should be in a--

Large white canted fangs bare themselves as the large mouth peels open and a sudden, hairy fist comes crashing down with an animalistic scream.

Mulder has no time to defend himself.

"What the fu-!" he manages before his world goes black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm trying.

\--  
CHAPTER THREE  
\--

She's sitting on the edge of his coffee table with her fingers across her mouth and her gaze glued to the television screen. Her eyes having long since gone gritty in their refusal to blink. Unwilling to miss a single moment even though she knows every one of them by heart.

The Assistant Director had been kind enough to leave her alone over an hour ago. Once the police courier had arrived and they had both reviewed the contents of the spliced-together videotape, they learned that they were no closer to finding Mulder or the person that had hit him than when they had been standing in the snow.

Before he had left, Skinner had gone into Mulder's kitchen whilst relaying further instructions into his phone and had surreptitiously microwaved a mug of hot chocolate mix he had found in the back of the cupboard. Doing the best he could.

Completely unaware of the kind gesture, the cup had gone cold next to Scully's hip.

She depresses the play button carefully with the edge of her fingernail and watches once more as the frenetic backward squibble of the tape resumes its real-time forward motion.

The colorless video gives her a bird's-eye-view of Mulder's dark umbrella as he stands before the coffee cart. The only still circle in a slipstream of other circles as they pass by behind him, all of them completely unaware of what is about to happen.

Scully tenses up in anticipation, her dread mounting as the very edge of the offending vehicle noses into frame.

The car is big and sleek and black, as tenacious as a panther.

She watches how the tires turn, how it jounces over the curb, watches how the pedestrians part, inevitably clearing a path straight for him.

And feels the strike in her own body at the same time she watches the grill strike him.

Sympathetic pains continue to ripple through her as he folds over the hood, as the coffees and the umbrella goes flying. The back of her head singing dully as he lashes back against the sidewalk, striking his skull, lying there sprawled and dazed. Most likely concussed.

And it's always at this moment that Scully has to swallow. Knowing that she's about to see Mulder's abductor again. Even though she doesn't want to. Even though it gets her no closer to finding this woman.

She watches impotently as the driver's side door opens and a high heeled leg flicks out, followed by a dark cloud of fur. The woman, whomever she is, is wholly indistinct and unrecognizable as she bends over Mulder. As she helps him to his feet, feigning assistance. Feigning compassion.

As she helps him get into the car to spirit him away.

Scully pauses the tape, just before the door is about to shut. Just before he's about to be taken again.

The idea of a frown makes her lips twitch beneath her finger pads as she looks at his blurry yet intimately familiar face with her heart in her lap.

Skinner promised to keep her updated on any and all leads that came in and had put his best team on the hunt. Until then, she was forced to simply sit and wait and worry.

Scully takes a deep breath in.

Leaning closer to the tv screen, she hits rewind again. Watches him rise and turn and forget.

"Damnit Mulder." She whispers between her fingers to the unluckiest man in the video. 

To herself. 

"Where are you?"

\--

He was there.

Coming around the side of the block in light sweatpants and a dark ratty sweatshirt with the hood up. A Rorschach of sweat blotting his chest despite the morning's chill. He was running with the grace of a track star and the fashion sense of a homeless man. With his naked ankles exposed above his sneakers.

Still precisely the type of man he had always been; one who belabored his concerns around his actions and not his appearance.

Which, she had always thought, was an easy thing to do for a man with a face like that.

Diana had found the perfect parking spot over an hour ago and had killed the engine, not wanting to draw undue attention in an idling car as she sat, waiting and watching. Almost instantly the cold had begun to creep its fingers into the car, frost threatening the windows. A local weather report had warned her earlier when she'd just left the FBI that heavy snowfall was due in by this afternoon and for now she was content to keep herself warm with a tall paper cup of black coffee and the luxurious confines of her beloved fur coat, not to mention all the fanciful ideas of her possible reception that came scurrying through her mind.

Seeing Fox now in the flesh made her both excited and slightly anxious. She relaxed her posture in an attempt to appear natural as he rounded the corner, as he threw back his hood. Showing her his short-cut hair. 

She made herself blend into the general scenery as she had learned so well to do in Tunisia. Making herself inconspicuous. Just another face in the crowd that one could only later describe in broad generalizations, until the very moment she wanted to be seen.

It also helped that she was parked half a block away on the opposite side of the street facing his apartment in a nondescript sedan. Delighted with the fact that it was much easier to see Fox's features now that the streetlights were no longer on, all the hard, downcast shadows having given way five minutes ago to a pink buttermilk dawn. 

She watched him slow his pace as he turned, intrigued by the concentrated look he had plastered across his sweaty face. A look that told her that his attention was conveniently elsewhere. A million miles away. So she dared once again to bring the small binoculars back up to her face.

He looked older now as she got a better look at him. More mature. More _handsome_ she was chagrined to learn. The interim years had only made him look healthier. Bulked him up with a layer of muscle that also had somehow streamlined his shape. He now bore a physicality he hadn't had when he'd been working in the BSU. When they'd been married.

The X-Files had evidently been doing him well and it made her slightly jealous.

Diana watched him come to a decelerated stop on the sidewalk before the Hegal Place hedges with his hands on the back of his head and his panting breaths pouring out in clouds above him. When he went about his cool-down stretches, she had the niggling impression that he was focusing an extra amount of attention to his right leg more than the other.

Then, much to her surprise, something caught Fox's eye and he put his foot down from where he had been rolling it, his head turning to gaze directly at her car.

Diana froze, inching the binoculars down as casually as she could, turning her head down and to the side to let her hair slide over and obscure her face, pretending all the while to be looking at something in her lap, swallowing hard and cursing as he began to make his way towards her. Looking both ways for cars. 

Her mind began to spill through a plethora of decent alibis, while her other hand instinctively rose to the ignition, ready to turn the key should she need to make a quick getaway. Should all else fail.

She watched out of the corner of her eye as he approached and promptly disappeared directly into her blind spot, gone for a moment. Then two. Only to reemerge with an old woman hooked on his arm and a grocery sack looped around his other. 

With their backs to her, Diana relaxed enough to stare more openly as she watched Fox help the old woman jaywalk across the icy street and kept staring until both of them had disappeared inside the building together. After the doors swung shut, she let her head fall back against the headrest and huffed out a silent laugh, chastising herself at her own foolish nervousness. Ten years surveilling Middle Eastern terrorists didn't make her pulse pound quite so stringently as this. 

She had every intention of speaking to Fox eventually but had wanted it to be on her terms. The idea of surprising him in his office had been her first consideration, only to be dashed after chatting idly with the Hoover Building security guard. She had learned that Fox had obtained a new work partner after going solo for a number of years and Diana didn't like the idea of being interrupted.

With her arms stiff on the steering wheel, she let her eyes slide to the passenger's seat and gazed once again at the red folder she'd illicitly obtained earlier that morning from Fox's basement office. The interior decorating of which had bemused her with its pushpin pictures and general miscellany. Giving her the sense that after she had left, he had only climbed deeper into the rabbit hole of the unexplained. 

She was happy to have gotten out when she did, but she was aching now to have him back by her side.

Diana had only had enough time this morning for a cursory look around, not wanting to stray too long or be too obvious as she got in, got out, and got what she had wanted from the back of the file cabinet. What she considered to be her _insurance policy_ should their reintroduction not go according to plan.

For as sure as she was about her own intentions, she was still slightly unsure about how Fox would react to her coming back.

Would he be pleased? Had he missed her? Would he take her right there in the doorway?

A lascivious grin eased across her face as a rather vivid image of her pressed up against the wall inside the door of their old apartment sprang into her mind. He was grunting into her neck with every thrust, her nails scrubbing through his hair. Her long, shiny leg folded around his sculpted ass as her body bounced in time with his, his sweatpants pooled around his ankles and his name hissing out of her throat, "Fox! Oh Fox! It's been so long--!"

and then a flash of red caught Diana's eye, tearing her away from her fantasy. She raised her head. Along with the binoculars.

The distraction was a small, redheaded woman that had just exited the building carrying a briefcase. She was strikingly beautiful, dressed in a smart, tan-colored pantsuit that, along with her frame, was engulfed in a long black trenchcoat, the hem of which flapped around her ankles as she walked slowly down the steps on stacked heels, using the handrail guardedly as she periodically looked back over her shoulder for something.

Diana didn't understand why this woman intrigues her so, not until Fox came bounding down behind the woman, wearing his own black trenchcoat and carrying his own briefcase. For all the world looking as though they were a pair.

She watched raptly as Fox leaped off the bottom penultimate step, only to stumble when he hit the sidewalk and grab suddenly at his right leg. The one Diana had been wondering about moments earlier. She watched the small woman immediately swarm him, only to have Fox rise to his full height and smile smugly, setting the leg down as though there was nothing wrong and graciously take the whack on his chest from the woman for his apparent joke.

Diana's mouth went dry as she watched the two of them make their way side-by-side to another sedan lined up among the many, his elbow brushing the woman's playfully, until the woman put her key into the lock and Fox opened the door, his eyes only for this woman as she got in, as their gazes met and something like a conversation passed briefly between them.

She watched him shut the woman's door as the engine came alive, watched him begin to make his way down the line of cars towards presumably his own and then turn back around, his briefcase swinging wide, his keys bouncing in his hand as he seemed to have come to some decision. Smirking to himself. 

He went back and knocked twice at the woman's window before bending in half as it rolled down. Then, to her utter disbelief, he smoothed down his tie and Fox, without any consideration for who may be watching, leaned in and kissed that small, red-headed woman so long and so indulgently that Diana herself felt the passion of it in the wick of her own bones.

A passion that had once upon a time been trained solely upon herself.

Her heart immediately evaporated inside her chest.

Knowing something she had never once considered in all her scheming before this moment;

Fox Mulder was head-over-heels in love with someone else.

And it changed everything.


End file.
